


Wishbone

by imperialhuxness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (But Let's Be Real So is Hux), (sort of), Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Is Alive, Exile, Fix-It, Getting Back Together, Hotel Sex, Kylo Ren is a Mess, Lost Love, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, scar kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21957295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhuxness/pseuds/imperialhuxness
Summary: Hours after a bolt to the chest, Hux wakes up on an escape craft lightyears from theSteadfast,  destination set for the criminal hub Nevarro.But even at the most distant reaches of the galaxy, he can't escape Kylo Ren's orbit.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 70
Kudos: 332





	Wishbone

The first thing Hux registers is pain. 

Nothing like the burn of the bolt or the unforgiving impact of his spine and skull against the bridge’s floor--this is duller, tamer, throbbing like an ionic pulse under his skin, centered between his ribs, webbing across the middle of his thigh. 

The wounds are bruised, perhaps, and someone’s pressing them--some centrifugal force where his body absorbed the plasma--

The plasma.

He shouldn’t be registering anything.

But his eyes blink open nonetheless, as if involuntarily. 

The blue-white scarlines of hyperspace resolve through the viewport in front of him. He’s sitting partially reclined in the cockpit of a diminutive shuttle. An...escape craft? The ceiling is low above his head.

 _What the_ fuck--

A glance down his body shows not the shoddy bandage job he’d had done on his leg, nor his burned-through tunic, but a thick black cloak covering all of it. The hood is tucked underneath, folded against his chest.

The cloak is long enough--is _wide_ enough--to completely cover his body, to drag the floorboard, and it’s unmistakably familiar. Under the vaguely sulfuric fuel scent--the ventilation on these light craft is absolute _shit_ \--there’s the clear aroma of standard detergent and the herbal musk of--

Of one of Ren’s few indulgences as Supreme Leader--that Corellian product he’d imported, at Hux’s encouragement. _(“We’re levying all these tributes. You’ve the right to use at least some of it selfishly.”)_

Hux shrugs the cloak off his chest, freeing his arms and revealing-- His torn tunic, yes, and a bacta patch where the bolt went in. It must be the only thing numbing the pain.

None of this makes sense. He should be dead. He should be dead, and Ren should have been the one to do it, by rights. 

It was Ren he betrayed--if for the most viable reason in the galaxy, the sheer fact that _if the Empire failed before, it’s going to fail again now, and kill billions of productive citizens for nothing in the process_.

He’d thought Ren would know instantly. Been convinced he had at the council meeting--he’s always had a nerve tuned to Hux’s _unease._ But the vain fucking bastard thought it was because of his face, thought Hux was just wanting to _see him._

As if.

(After everything.)

Perhaps there’s something Hux doesn’t remember. Perhaps a few troopers dragged him to medbay, then he stumbled his way to an escape craft, plugged in a destination and promptly lost consciousness and memory, perhaps--

He sits forward, with a sudden flare of pain. His hand goes instinctively to the patch, his breath hissing through his teeth. 

The craft’s navicomputer flashes red and blue with a course set well into Wild Space. 

_2:49 hours remaining,_ announces the information bar at the top of the readout. 

Hux taps at it, pulling up a starmap showing constellations he hasn’t seen since he was a cadet on the _Eclipse_. Another tap cross-references the data to a system he’s never heard of, but a world that sounds vaguely familiar.

“Nevarro?” He pops his lips--stars, they’re dry. “Why would I…” 

Even with his mind fogged by bacta and symoxin and panic, he wouldn’t have set his course for a world of which he knows little more than its name and underworld connections. It would be nothing shy of suicidal. _(Though wasn’t the rest of this?)_

He pinches the navigational data closed, taps the settings menu--the shuttle’s navicomp history should be here somewhere, maybe that will provide some indicator of how the _fuck_ any of this happened.

As soon as he exits the map, though, a comms notification dominates the screen. _One unread holorecording, sent four hours ago._

“ _What...”_ he murmurs, but taps _open_ anyway.

The pressure in his chest moves immediately to the pit of his stomach, his breath catches in the back of his throat, and his right hand moves unsteadily to his mouth: Ren’s blue image materializes above the screen, a miniature ghost with his brows drawn and his lips trembling.

The mask is off, at least.

The image breathes for several seconds, facing the floor--all shaky inhales and visible swallows--before looking straight into the camera. Ren runs a hand through his hair, that tic he has when he’s at a total loss.

His voice, though, comes out hard.

_“Armitage. Don’t make me regret this.”_

“You fucking sentimental coward--” Even when Hux _openly_ betrayed him, he couldn’t manage to--

 _“I have unfinished business with the Jedi, so the droids are taking care of you.”_ Ren runs a hand through his hair again, bites down hard on his lower lip. “ _By the time you get this, you’ll be halfway to Wild Space. If you make any attempt to return, I won’t be… I’ll-- Damn it, Hux.”_

“Damn _you._ ”

 _“Don’t try to contact me. I don’t want your traitor’s excuses, I don’t want your explanations, I just.”_ He swipes a hand under his nose, tips his head up with the slightest sniff. _“You’ve been recorded as deceased, your body jettisoned. We’re even now. For Starkiller.”_ He inhales sharply. _“Don’t fucking get found.”_

The holo breaks off with a definitive flash, the blue dissolving against the lines outside the viewport.

Hux tips his head back against the pilot’s seat, rubs his temples. 

He can’t help picturing Ren standing above his prone form, watching the smoke curl up from his torso, cataloguing the blood on his thigh, the cane by his side, Pryde rambling all too excitedly-- _Hux was a traitor, Hux loathed the Empire, Hux loathed_ you _, look at him, look at the weakness, Supreme Leader, he was pathetic, not worth any of what you gave him, damn good thing the Emperor wanted me in charge of your forces, he was always_ useless--

Hux can picture, too, some Kayfour unit scooping him up, some B-series med droid binding his wounds. Toting him around like so much flotsam.

His body’s been jettisoned, all right.

The only strange part is how _wrecked_ Ren looked on the holo. Like he couldn’t have seen this coming, when Hux warned him from the start. 

Ren, in typical fashion, had refused to understand.

They’d fought on the _Steadfast_ , after the _Finalizer_ fell. Fought, when Ren became more interested in Sith artifacts than modern weaponry. Fought, as Hux washed his hands of all of it, told Ren that he had his obedience but not his support. 

(Not to speak of his loyalty.

(Not to _think_ of his love.)

And now Palpatine is going to lead the galaxy to ruin and chaos— _again_ —and Hux is trapped away from all of it. 

Powerless. 

Exhausted.

At Ren’s mercy--all too literally--to the last.

Hyperspace streaks past, and Hux digs his fingers into the armrests.

#

Hux blinks awake again at the chime of the navicomputer.

 _“Approaching destination,”_ the system announces, monotone. “ _Prepare for drop to sublight in three, two, one--”_

The shuttle is small enough that the sudden stop jars both of Hux’s wounds. He grips the console reflexively to keep his head from bumping the panel above the viewport.

He hisses as the pain flares, but at least the adrenaline fully wakes him, heart juddering to break his ribs. His pulse pounds in his thigh, and the cane--of course Ren’s droids took care of that, of course--rattles in the floorboard. (Not that Hux will use it down here.)

He steeples his fingers in front of his nose and mouth, inhaling and exhaling staccato.

There’s a world below him, and he has no idea what to do with it.

From space, Nevarro is pewter-gray, a drab, lifeless rock that looks more like a dead and 

massive comet than a seething underworld hub. 

The references he’s seen to it in smuggling reports, though, have never been damning enough to merit an operational focus. 

It’s always read like a stopover: _Following transit through Nevarro, the cargo was passed to Resistance operatives; after a one-night stay in Nevarro, available transport data suggests that the arms merchant..._

Nevarro. A midway point and little else The fuel stop, the _retasking_ before whatever comes next.

Hux flicks open the public comms channel as he enters orbit, wracking his brain for a phony call sign to give to the planetary defenses. But static crackles into the cockpit--no hailing, no halting, no threats. It’s almost unsettling.

As the transport descends through layers of atmosphere, Hux leaves the channel up, waiting. Nothing comes but the low buzz of dead air.

Alright then.

He’s broken through the troposphere before the landscape catches his eye.

The rocky terrain that from orbit looked cold and dead is _volcanic,_ threaded through--at least here, outside the settlement--with red-orange veins of lava. It spouts up periodically, in ephemeral geysers that light the evening air.

Hux pulls the shuttle well out of the clearance zone. 

Within a few knots, the navicomputer begins a countdown to its final destination, and the last of its fuel supply. 

_“Prepare for landing,”_ the system says before thudding into the gravel of the settlement’s space port.

Once the massive plume of dust clears from the viewport, what spreads around it is little more than a demarcated field, scattered with a rusty collection of jumpers, shuttles, and cargo vessels. 

Hux would bet every hard emergency credit in the shuttle’s supply kit that none of them are anything like registered. 

Just as well. His isn’t either.

The escape crafts are designed for worst-case scenarios. Designed to become ghosts.

Hux staggers to his feet, and finds they hold him, for all he’s having to duck in the cockpit. He slips off his tattered jodhpurs in favor of the soft, one-size leggings in the kit, then sheds his tunic with a sharp frisson of pain under the bacta. 

The unmarked black jacket in the kit fits over the patch and what’s left of his shirt sleeves. The cloak--a spare of Ren’s, he knows--covers all of it easily; it’s far too big.

His knife is still in his tunic’s sleeve, and the shuttle is also equipped with a spare SE-44C. The knife goes into his boot, the pistol into a utility belt.

He was trained for this. For emergency landings in hostile territory.

As he opens the shuttle’s hatch, it’s almost like he doesn’t have to think.

#

The settlement on Nevarro has the transient air Hux might have expected, both from the reports and the fact that it’s all but built on top of a volcano. 

Bluish streetlamps light up a gravelly thoroughfare, lined on either side with stalls and shops in varying states of disrepair. 

The scent of baking bread wafts out of a structure with a burlap roof and no door to speak of. The flayed carcasses of some unidentifiable local species hang in the windows of a darkened butchery. Clumps of well-armed drifters loiter outside cafes and gunsmiths, chattering low, occasionally ducking out of the path of a rickety speeder bike or burdened luggabeast. 

None of them spare a glance for a hooded, limping figure wrapped in a cloak twice his size, but Hux cuts over to a quieter side street as soon as one opens up. He prefers the lowest possible odds of having his cowl jostled back, and then, well. Probably being shot on sight, or at least arrested for a bounty.

(Who’d put one on, though, on a dead man?)

Hux is nothing anymore, just one of the drifters. Still, he keeps his cloak pulled tight, the hood draped as low as possible without impeding his ability to read signs. He needs a motel, first and foremost, preferably with a cantina attached.

He’ll rent out a shitty room for an indefinite time period, and then he’ll.

And then.

He’ll do.

Something.

His boots scuff against the gravel, kick up dust as he stops in his tracks. 

He has _no fucking idea_ what to do next. He threw away the only thing that ever mattered to him, alienated the only person, and yes, maybe it worked, maybe he made it out, he’s still alive, and the galaxy has yet to fall, but it’s only a matter of time, and he’s lost, and his leg is throbbing, and he can’t breathe and--

A shadow crosses Hux’s periphery; his hand strays to his blaster on conditioning, but it’s no threat. Just a Kel Dor who casts him a curious, goggled glance and keeps walking.

Okay.

_Okay._

First things first.

Shelter. Food. A drink.

Then a plan.

Only a few buildings down, an argon-light sign flashes _A C A N C Y_ in the window of a building whose proper signage isn’t lettered in Aurebesh. 

What can he do but duck inside?

#

The chemical lighting sputters overhead, casting the dingy, low-ceilinged lobby in a yellowish glow. 

Hux--cowl still fully in place--does his best not to lean obviously against the counter, just folds both gloved hands on top of it while the Trandoshan behind it taps at a readout screen.

“A single room?” they drawl, tilting their chin with a practiced inquisitiveness.

“ _Obviously_.”

The Trandoshan whistles low. “Kriff, sorry.”

Hux’s trigger finger itches, but he just stiffens his knuckles, clenching until the seams of his gloves creak.

“Just give me a fucking room.”

“One fucking room, all yours.” The xeno slides a keychip across the counter, hardly looking up. “Fifty cred deposit.”

Hux drops sixty. “Where’s the nearest cantina?”

“One building down, across the lane.” The Trandoshan sneers up into the cowl. “Have fun.”

#

Hux doesn’t spend much time in the room, just long enough to drop his supply bag and evaluate the level of shittiness. 

Blackish smoke stains spill chiaroscuro across the spackled ceiling, and the carpet is threadbare under his boots, bunching at the corners of the room. A double-bed with a purple quilt dominates the center, beside a rusty radiator and a frosted window.

A brown couch whose stuffing shows through the tattered upholstery sits this side of a low divider, a long, low table across from it. 

Ren would fucking hate this place. He’d survey it once with his prince’s eye and either tell Hux it was unacceptable, or start undressing then and there. _“What better excuse to fuck dirty?”_

Hux clenches his eyes shut against the prickling of tears. 

Ren’s an idiot. An idiot who’s ruined his own fucking organization and only enslaved himself again. (If he was ever truly free, that is; if he could have ever been anything but doomed to repeat his grandfather’s legacy; if--

“Damn it,” Hux murmurs aloud, tips his head toward the filthy ceiling. 

He needs a drink, or something stronger.

#

There’s a valachord in the far corner of the cantina across the road, a four-handed musician sitting at its bench, playing two lively songs at once, in a major and minor key. They harmonize well, and Hux is sitting close enough that they drown out some of the cacophony.

He took the last seat at the bar about an hour ago, and found out from the first dealer to approach him that spice is expensive on Nevarro. 

He sticks to liquor instead, the kind of stuff he kept stashed in his quarters but could seldom get Ren to drink with him. 

(He managed it twice on Starkiller, though, when Ren would take his long, punishing walks in the snow and return to the command station red-cheeked and sniffling under the mask. 

The tip of his nose had been ice-cold against Hux’s neck, his long fingers painfully numb, and the first time, Hux had said, _“Drink this, it’ll warm you up.”_ The second time, Ren asked for it.)

He orders a brandy for himself, and a whiskey in memory of each night. 

The valachord mingles with live updates from a podrace on the holoscreens above the bar, with chatter about bounties and well-concealed smuggling routes, going rates and the best blaster carbines credits can buy. 

A part of Hux--for a while, at least--is dimly aware he should be absorbing all of this, calculating, planning. Formulating a cover story that will get him off this rock and gainfully employed. There was a reason Ren sent him _here,_ obviously.

But the more he hears of the conversations around him--windows into a life he’s never prepared for, has no idea how to begin--regret gathers inside him like a stormcloud. 

He should be grateful to be alive, he knows. (Grateful to _Ren_ , but he won’t go there.)

He should be grateful, but he didn’t plan for this.

He’d gamed it out before comming the Resistance: it was simple, elegant, smart. The Resistance would take on the Emperor’s fleet, destroy them with the full capacity of their allies.

Fire would be focused on the planet-killers (as it should be--how _brute,_ how _tactless_ ), and the Order would simply pull out while the Jedi battled Palpatine, retreat to the Unknown Regions where it started, and regroup.

Needing a Force user of his own, Hux would personally pull Ren out, if he were anywhere but aboard the _Steadfast_ , and Ren would be pissed at first.

At first. 

Until he accepted that Hux had prepared for this, had predicted every sour turn of Ren’s poor decisionmaking, every bit of collateral damage from his quest for power. 

Until he saw that Hux was perfectly content to keep him anyway, to use him as Snoke had, to accept him for exactly what he was.

Eventually, he would fall to his knees and apologize.

(He would also suck Hux’s dick.)

They would rule the galaxy that way, pick up where they left off six months ago, before the Palpatine business and Ren’s ensuing madness.

Either all of that, or the slight risk that Hux would be killed in the process.

There was no version of this story where Hux wound up on a nowhere planet with Ren’s clothes, a handful of credchips, and a bloodstream full of booze.

He’s survived, certainly, as he tends to.

And for what? To live job to job as a bounty hunter? To hope his shuttle survives long enough to make it out of the system?

 _But wait,_ his fourth drink wonders, _is it so wise to consider leaving?_

Ren will want him back, probably within hours. Need him back, as soon as he’s horny, or at least as soon as he’s gotten past the Emperor.

And perhaps Ren will.

 _Hells,_ says something called Rodian rocket fuel, _Ren can probably even do it._

He’s the most powerful, intelligent being Hux has ever encountered--objectively speaking--and if he thought he could outgame Palpatine, who was Hux to criticize him?

_(Hux was trying to save the galaxy from a second bloated, clumsy, ineffective Galactic Empire. Hux knew exactly what he was doing, and doesn’t regret--_

By Drink Number Six, Hux has pulled the standard datapad out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the bar, actively watching for a notification. A chance to take all of it back.

_Ren will at least want a last word, Ren will at least want his advice, Ren will--_

Hux orders Number Seven.

#

The cantina closes after 0300 hours local. 

Not that Hux is paying much attention to the chrono in his motel room when he returns. It’s got to be older than he is, glows red where it should be blue, has glitches on the screen that conceal parts of the digits, turning the time into a series of incoherent lines.

Or that could just be the alcohol.

He fumbled the keychip in the corridor, had to grope for it on hands and knees under the fizzling lampdisk. He managed two vertical steps once the door opened, then collapsed onto the stained couch rather than the bed.

He’s fidgeting with a tear in the cushion, plucking at yellowed stuffing where it seeps out of the brown upholstery. He should have gotten a beer to go.

He rubs a chunk of polyester stuffing into a sphere between his finger and thumb, tosses it onto the floor.

The smoke stains on the ceiling seem to undulate, dancing out a shadow play like some alien ritual. Here a monster, there a saber, here an ocean, a forest, a ship.

The buzz of the alcohol has morphed into a throbbing between his ears, like his skull is taped against the chassis of a speeder bike.

“I need to find work,” he murmurs to the gaping sofa and no one in particular.

Ren won’t call for him. Ren hates him. Who wouldn’t? (He does.)

He pulls another, larger chunk of stuffing, threads his fingers through it to the knuckles. It’s surprisingly soft for the state of the upholstery. Yields easily. 

Ren has never wanted a damn thing to do with traitors. 

Hux should be grateful to be alive, he knows. It’s almost funny.

He slips the stuffing off of his index finger, stacks it onto his middle finger. Then slips both loops onto his ring finger.

(Ren had two glasses of red wine once. Ren asked him to marry him.)

Hux slides all the loops onto his little finger; it looks enveloped by a sulfurous cloud.

Grateful to be alive? Grateful to _waste his life._

The smoke stains whirl slowly. Here a knife, a blaster, a pill, a noose.

Hux shucks the stuffing from his finger. Wads it carelessly. Tosses it onto the carpet.

(Ren won’t call for him.)

(He doesn’t want to be called. He’s done.)

Here a comet, here a planet.

Here a black hole, ever expanding.

#

The next afternoon, he starts with red wine. Corellian. 

(The buzz in his ears drowns out the future around him.)

He’s had this vintage before. (Didn’t fuck Ren after.)

#

He wants to. 

The motel room chrono reads most of 1930 local--he’s back early, and is wondering.

This was all a huge fucking mistake, and if Ren doesn’t miss his dazzling personality or strategic brilliance, he’ll sure as hell miss his arse. (His waist, his chest, his cock, the delicate curve where his neck becomes his shoulder.)

The emergency datapad has a rudimentary secure messaging function, and even in Wild Space with a head full of cheap cantina wine, Hux could never forget Ren’s personal secure frequency.

Now it’s like it’s been engraved on the backs of his eyelids; sees it every time they droop.

A cleaning droid picked up the pile of stuffing, and Hux is trying not to fuck up the couch any further. They’ll probably already charge him for the tear it _absolutely_ came with.

He’s just keeping his hands busy with the datapad, really, but before he quite realizes, the messaging application is open, Ren’s frequency blinking at the top of the screen. He lets his finger move without him. Overthinking has seldom done him any good.

~~_Ren, I know you asked that I not--_ ~~

~~_Supreme Leader, is your right hand as poor company as mine?_ ~~

~~_Let me explain_ ~~

~~_Let me apologize_ ~~

_Don’t delete this, darling. I’m so sorry. I’m not asking for my position back, take my rank, strip my clearances, keep me in your bedroom. No one will have to know, I’ll be your sex toy i’m sorry i have nothing else i love_

**_Pathetic_ ** **.**

The voice that sounds too much like Brendol’s stops Hux’s hand dead, cuts through the Corellian fog in his brain.

He doesn’t have to go back, not to an Order that is no longer his.

He’s done.

~~_Don’t delete this, darling. I’m so sorry. I’m not asking for my position back, take my rank, strip my clearances, keep me in your bedroom. No one will have to know, I’ll be your sex toy i’m sorry i have nothing else i love_ ~~

#

Hux wakes up to the periwinkle of twilight; the chrono reads somewhere past 2100.

His head has stopped pounding.

He runs a hand through his hair and dons Ren’s cloak.

It’s started to smell like tabac and xeno body odor.

#

The cantina is less than full before Hux has drained two whiskeys (fuck that Corellian engine grease). He’d be counting the vodka bottles on the shelf behind the GG-unit that’s pouring tonight, but tonight the holoscreens are blaring something that isn’t podracing.

It’s the _Galaxy Beacon--_ who knew any of their correspondents survived Starkiller?--casting live from a shuttle above a darkened landscape that must be Exogon.

The Order has fallen to pieces, and they aren’t even Hux’s to put together.

Charred debris, some of it still tattooed with that abhorrent red Sith symbol, floats freely past the viewport behind the pert Aqualish reporter. She’s trying hard for objectivity, but she’ll stumble over every line or so, mouth pulling up in an ecstatic quirk. Twisting the knife.

Hux grips his third Ithorian of the night hard with one hand and adjusts his cowl with the other.

The reporter has cycled back through the same generic battle digest when she breaks off mid-sentence.

Here it is; she’s about to start giggling--

“I’m getting an update over my audial piece.” She presses one hairy finger to what must be her audial orifice. All four of her eyes shoot open, shock-wide. Her lips part, work, and then.

“Viewers, this just confirmed from Resistance officials: Ben Solo, also known as Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, is dead.”

The Aqualish’s mouth.

It keeps moving, which is bizarre because there’s no sound coming out. 

There’s no sound at all, just a deafening roar between Hux’s ears, like a hurricane gale. Like a transmission gone dead at full volume.

 _This can’t have happened. This_ **cannot** _have happened._

Every trace of Hux’s anger, his determination, evaporates--at least momentarily--into pure shock.

_Ren should have pulled himself out of this, Ren always pulls himself out of things, it’s one of his few redeeming traits, it’s--_

The harsh jangle of glass breaking cuts through the static in Hux’s head. There’s a turquoise puddle of Ithorian whiskey between Hux’s elbows, channeled across the counter by an archipelago of shards.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Hux says aloud. _Ren can’t be gone, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t_ . Hux wouldn’t believe it if not for the _feeling_ , the prickle at the back of his skull ( _the place that used to light up when they were both coming at once, swaddled together in Ren’s Force_ ). “ **Fuck.** ”

Hux’s stomach churns. He slams too many credits onto the countertop. He stumbles through the growing throng around the holoscreen, and out into the night. 

#

He’s lost count of how many times he’s thrown up.

At least last night, he held far more liquor than two whiskeys and a little wine with no such malfunctions, but it’s the sobbing that keeps doing it.

He’s curled into the far corner of the couch, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. His throat feels like it’s been scraped out with grappling hooks. He still hasn’t caught his breath.

The worst part is that this shouldn’t matter.

He’s free now. No call left to wait on.

He could head two streets over and pick up a bounty fob. He has a ship, a blaster, a knife, and an elite skillset. He could make a life for himself.

Certainly.

He could. 

He will.

He just.

Needs time.

#

The next few days bleed together in a swirl of dirty bacta patches and fluctuating migraines. 

Hux doesn’t return to the cantina, but only leaves the motel room to buy extra provisions at a nearby convenience store. 

He oscillates between the couch and the bed, between planning and remembering.

_“Did you get out here much,” Ren asks, turning from the ocean back to Hux, “when you lived here?”_

_Hux drags his bare foot over a slick and livid patch of moss on the outcropping they’ve mounted. Another wave breaks against the edge of the rock, tossing up a white spume that mists Hux’s face and uniform as it falls back into the sea._

_Arkanis’ typical gray skies stretch dark toward the horizon, refracting ashen onto the choppy water. Hux and Ren are here for arms transfer negotiations. On Snoke’s orders, and off the planetary record._

_Hux squeezes Ren’s bare hand, cold as his own, then lets go. “Not exactly,” he returns. “Only for lessons.”_

_Hux’s memories of this world are a gray blur, punctuated only by a brightness he associates with his mother._

_“Holy shit.” Ren’s eyes widen, brows climb. He left his mask with their boots farther up the cliffs. “Don’t tell me you learned to swim in this.”_

_“No, no, I—_ “ 

_Hux breaks off into something that isn’t quite a yelp as another wave crashes against the ledge, harder, sending a few frigid centimeters of water seething over the moss and barnacles. He staggers backward on instinct, groping for Ren’s arm. Ren’s hand comes to rest on top of his, as if automatically._

_“You alright?” Ren laughs. (Actually_ laughs _, it’s fucking distracting.)_

_“Yes.” Hux doesn’t drop his hand. “Perfectly fine.”_

_“Should we get down?”_

_“If you like.”_

_Hux takes Ren’s hand as they climb down from the ledge and into wet sand. The waterline recedes, leaving bubbles on the sand that pop rapidly, leave pockmarks. The grit makes Hux want to step in the water just to wash it off, but he knows better, keeps walking._

_“So what were you going to say they taught you out here?” Ren asks, after a moment, stepping easily over a gap between two dry rocks. Seawater churns into the sand below as Hux follows._

_“Natural selection and the value of training.”_

_Ren snorts. “What else.”_

_“Shut up,” Hux says. “They used to keep nerfs at the old Academy--”_

_“Okay.”_

_“To trim the lawn, Ren.”_

_In Hux’s periphery, Ren’s gnawing at his lip against what’s obviously a smile. “Keep going. Please.”_

_The only bad thing about Ren’s rare smiles is that they’re contagious. Hux slaps him lightly in the arm. “Why are you laughing?”_

_“I’m not laughing!” Ren casts a well-timed glance out to sea, and a gust of wind blows his hair into his face, veiling it. “I’m desperately curious about the Academy’s landscaping procedures.”_

_“Fuck off.”_

_“I refuse.” Ren sobers, looking back at Hux. His hand brushes the back of Hux’s as they walk. “I want to know. You never tell me stories.”_

_Hux slips his fingers through Ren’s. “Very well. The nerfs. There was a sizeable flock that lived on the property, but the young ones would--you’re aware how they crave salt?”_

_“I am now.”_

_“They--well, the stupid ones, anyway--would occasionally head down the cliffs, seeking salt on the beach. Whenever one would wander off, the Commandant would bring a few of his favorite cadets to watch--I wasn’t one, I just got dragged along once, but.”_

_Hux stops for breath, and Ren nods attention._

_“The young nerf went down, started licking salt off of rocks like these, carelessly close to the sea monsters. You can imagine how well that went for--”_

_“Wait,” Ren interrupts, tugging on Hux’s hand for his attention. His gaze sparkles with interest. “Sea monsters? What kind?”_

_“If you saw the black clumps a kilometer or so back on the beach, you saw them.” Hux pulls his greatcoat tighter against the wind. “They’re known to lay with their tentacles on the beach, waiting for landfaring prey. They’re one of just a few varieties that go near the shoreline, but the only one to touch it or threaten anything on land. They’re--”_

_He cuts himself off and runs a hand through his mussed hair, at once vividly aware he’s rambling. “I’m sorry. You came with me expecting sex on the beach, but you’re getting the sea monster talk.”_

_“Sea monsters are a compelling alternative,” Ren replies, with an uncharacteristic warmth. He runs his thumb over Hux’s knuckles. “What was the point of making you watch the nerfs?”_

_“I… I think it was supposed to be something about the value of preventive conditioning versus waiting on natural selection to take its course, but I was four years old, so. All I learned was to stay away from the water.”_

_Hux waits a moment longer for the inevitable snark that accompanies any reference to Hux’s childhood or training. Ren returns as good as Hux gives him for his own Republic background, or tends to, usually to the effect of_ ‘this explains SO much.’

_But he’s quiet for several long paces. Just keeps stroking the back of Hux’s hand._

_Finally, he says, barely audible under the breeze, “You learned that the galaxy is made up of predators and prey.”_

_Leave it to Ren to get philosophical about the Arkanian food chain. But by now Hux knows better than to try to shut him down._

_“I suppose,” he allows, mildly._

_Of course Ren continues as if he hadn’t heard him. “So Starkiller,” he says, “is the most massive, terrifying sea monster in existence.”_

_Not only philosophical but psychological. He needs to save it for the interrogation rooms._

_“Starkiller is a means to an end.”_

_Ren hums at that, noncommittal, as if there’s a part of him that’s considering chiseling into Hux’s brain and chipping at the sediment built up around his childhood complexes._

_But he stays silent instead, and lets go of Hux’s hand to clamber onto another ledge that stretches out over the water. Once atop, he holds his hand down to help Hux up. It isn’t necessary, but Hux takes it anyway. Ren has--objectively speaking--the best hands._

_A wave has just broken against the end of the outcropping, falling in its shower of drops. The barnacles and fossils attached to the rock are rough against Hux’s feet as he and Ren walk to the edge again. The water swirls against the base of the cliff, lapping like a monster of its own._

_Hux nudges Ren as the next white crest starts to approach, meters distant but well within sight. “Playing dangerously, are we?”_

_“Always.”_

_The water erupts against the limestone within seconds, but Ren’s arm flies up at the same time, fingers outstretched. The wave freezes in place, like pieces of glass suspended from above, and Hux’s breath catches in his throat. Ren cocks his head at him, clearly seeking approval._

_Hux shrugs. “Not bad.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_Ren’s hand drops, and Hux’s flinch turns into an outright_ jump _as the water starts to seep cold across the ledge. What’s more surprising is that he doesn’t land._

_Ren’s arms wrap around him, lifting him several centimeters off the face of the rock and pressing their faces close together._

_Hux’s heart hammers against his ribs. “Thank you?”_

_“You can put your legs around my waist,” Ren murmurs back, low, conspiratorial._

_What can Hux do but comply? He wraps his arms around Ren’s neck and pulls his legs up as Ren’s hands slip down to support his ass._

_Ren tightens his grip and presses Hux against his broad chest, Hux’s face so close to Ren’s that he can feel his breath warm against his lips, and the tips of their noses brush._

_It’s too overcast to pick out the gold in his irises, but Ren’s eyes are captivating nonetheless. Hux is sure Ren can feel his heart pounding through his tunic._

_“Your nose is cold,” Hux whispers after a moment._

_“Yeah?”_

_“Freezing.” Hux presses his own against it, just a bit more firmly. “You get absolutely no circulation in--”_

_Ren cuts him off with a kiss--tender and oddly languid. Hux sighs into his mouth, into the movement of his full lips; works his fingers into the fine hairs at the base of Ren’s neck._

_“I love you,” Ren breathes when he pulls back._

_Hux just kisses him again._

#

It isn’t like he misses Ren, at least not any more than he has for the past two years, when they were both alive, well, and close together, but pretending (at least most days) that they’d never been anything more than colleagues.

(Certainly never known their way around inside one another, or shared a drink or a laugh or an aspiration.)

The Ren who forced him to his knees in the throne room, who brushed him off and into a console, who transferred command to the motherfucking _Steadfast_ and his trust to Pryde, had felt like a handsome but cruel stranger. Unattainable, yes, but just as undesirable.

It had been strange, then, those odd bursts of tenderness--the ghosts of the old intimacy. Ren’s fingers on his collar. The teasing. The occasional praise for the Hosnian System’s fate, even the uncalled-for remark about the mended mask.

And then, this. The life-debt repaid, though Ren must have known damn well that Hux was under Snoke’s orders on Starkiller. It’s inexplicable.

But whatever.

Ren was always an enigma, yes, but now he’s gone, that puzzle left permanently unresolved.

His death should make Hux’s life considerably less complicated, but the tidbits of news he follows from his datapad do just the opposite.

It wasn’t mere Republic convention that the _Galaxy Beacon_ Aqualish referred to him as Ben first. Additional information reports he played...a significant role in the Emperor’s defeat? 

None of the reports give any detail about how the _fuck_ that worked, but it would be an odd narrative for a fledgling government to conjure from thin air: _“We needed the other side’s help to defeat the adversary”? “We couldn’t do it on our own”?_

Even the Resistance wouldn’t be so foolish as to fabricate _that_ , not without there being some truth to it.

There’s something vindicating about it--the notion that Ren eventually came to see his side. Of course, he doesn’t care about whether that ever crossed Ren’s mind. 

Whether Ren thought of him before he died.

#

Hux decides to give himself exactly four cycles before attempting to find work. 

He’s a brand-new hunter with no credentials to speak of, just a pistol and his powers of persuasion, so he doubts his first job will pay much. It will be more to earn credibility than about the credits.

Luckily the shuttle was well-equipped. He’s gone back to it twice to pay for the spaceport spot, and only found more in a floorboard compartment. It seems above the standard amount of emergency funds, but he isn’t about to complain.

He knows he should erase Ren’s message, for operational security reasons. 

He knows.

#

“I won’t give a fob to just anyone.”

The Twi’lek guild rep’s leatherbound headtails tense and curl toward his shoulders. He sets down his cocktail glass and stirs the olives with a toothpick. “Membership requirements are flexible these days, but I can’t disclose sensitive target details to an unknown party.”

This is the third potential employer Hux has spoken to at the cantina two streets over. There’s no valachord at this joint, no holoscreens. Just an old-fashioned dartboard in an alcove and rifles strapped to most of the patrons.

The past two contacts Hux has addressed said much the same as the Twi’lek in front of him, but eventually, someone will have to be desperate enough to hire a faceless outlaw with no reputation. _(How else does anyone get their start in the underworld?)_

“I understand completely,” he drawls in reply. “Is what you’re suggesting that I... _acquire_ a fob from another hunter?”

The Twi’lek casts a knowing glance toward Hux’s leg. The limp’s apparently still hard to miss. “I’d know my limits before attempting that.”

“You know nothing of my limits,” Hux spits back.

_I destroyed five fucking planets, I built the most competent fighting force in history; this time last year, the entire galaxy feared my name; I have a blaster under Ren’s stupid dramatic cloak, and I’m not afraid to use--_

The rep takes a delicate sip of his drink. “I _know_ a bad leg won’t do you any favors on a high-priority mission.”

“My leg is no impediment to my other skills.” It will certainly heal with time.

“A word of advice.” The Twi’lek pauses, gestures toward Hux with his glass before plucking out the toothpick and sucking an olive off the end. He chews the whole thing and swallows before continuing, “Desperation is a bad look in this business. May I recommend factory work on Geonosis?”

Since _I’d sooner shoot myself in the head_ is a more personal answer than Hux is used to giving--not to mention the fact that much closer to the Core than this, he won’t be able to hide behind a cowl for long--he merely nods his thanks.

Hux gets up from the table before this rep can leave him first, like the others, and weaves through packed tables to perch in the last seat at the bar. 

The barkeep makes her way down to the end. Even standing directly in front of Hux, she has to yell over a sudden bout of raucous laughter from across the cantina, “No luck?”

Hux pops his lips, grateful for the shadow of the cowl. “Low offers,” he lies.

The woman hums what’s obviously skepticism, but is smart enough not to argue. For commensurate generous tips, she’s pointed out the three prospective employers Hux has met with over the past six hours.

“Is there anyone else here tonight?” he asks.

“Afraid not, hon. They cycle in and out. Maybe next week, though.” 

_Fuck._

Hux is fairly certain he didn’t say it aloud, but the barkeep clucks her tongue as if it was understood, and rubs her hands across the front of her apron.

“Anything else I can get for you?” 

Hux shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t, but his brain won’t turn off. 

He’ll try another cantina tomorrow, but it’s unlikely he’ll fare much better there, or at the next one, or the next, and he’ll wind up working his skin to ribbons on an assembly line. He’ll live in a company housing pod on a planet with a too-thick atmosphere, and never see the stars again, he’ll--

Ren expected him to be able to make it here. 

He was supposed to be able to put himself back together, build a life out of a claustrophobic escape craft and a survival pack.

But he can’t, not tonight, anyway, and he’d rather not think about it.

“Rodian rocket fuel,” he sighs. “Neat.”

#

Well past 0300 hours, Nevarro’s constellations turn overhead. 

Hux left the cantina at closing time, and should be reaching his motel any minute now. 

_Any._

_Minute._

It’s not his fault all the streets look the same in this drab settlement. It’s certainly not his fault that the sidewalk keeps tilting under his feet, like the cracked asphalt is _trying_ to make him stumble.

The streetlamp pole a meter in front of him suddenly doubles: two rusty metal beams, two incandescent beams of light that stab right through his skull. 

“Damnit, damnit,” he murmurs, cradling his head in his hands even as the sidewalk revolts under his feet again.

He staggers left, and his vision tunnels between his elbows, black gnawing at the edges until the asphalt is nothing but a gray pinprick.

Then, nothing.

#

There’s the impression of hands. 

A flash of pink light that might be dawn.

But his eyelids are heavy, a migraine undeniably swelling behind them, and he isn’t sure he can move any of his limbs.

He fades again.

#

When Hux wakes up, the window has thrown refracted light across the smoke stains, white and prismatic. It shows out every rill of the ceiling, every crack the smoke has filled and highlighted.

It’s bright enough to bother his low-grade headache--it’s not throbbing, as he would have expected, but it’s still there, pressure collecting in the blood vessels behind his eyes. He’s squeezed them shut again--against what must be morning sun--when he realizes: he’s in the bed.

He hasn’t used it since he got here, just curled up or sprawled out on the couch every night and accidentally fallen asleep. Last night would have been an odd time to try it out--and tuck himself in, at that. 

Hells.

He doesn’t even remember getting back.

His chest clenches with the anxiety of lost memories--not the first, in the past week, and all the more terrifying for it. 

The inside of his mouth, he realizes, feels practically dessicated. He has to physically unstick his tongue from his palate, then props himself up on his elbows and casts a glance around the room for his water bottle.

The shadow of movement in his periphery, though, demands his full attention, instantly ratcheting the tightness in his chest up to full-blown palpitations.

Between the window and the foot of the bed stands _Ren._

(That doesn’t help Hux’s heart.)

He sits bolt upright, hands unconsciously flying to fix his bedhead.

“You’re dead,” he says.

Ren doesn’t exactly reply, just takes a step forward and shrugs. He’s wearing a soft-looking, well-fitted gray tunic that looks surprisingly clean, above black leggings in a similar style and the battered combat boots Hux would recognize anywhere. 

As he gets closer, the sunlight falls across his face, catching the brown in his hair, the gold in his bloodshot eyes, and--

And the blank space on his right cheek where the scar should be. 

(It’s just the kind of thing one would lose after death, it’s just--)

Except Hux doesn’t believe in the afterlife, barely believes in the Force.

He does believe, however, in Kylo fucking Ren. (Stars help him.) It would appear Ren got out, after all.

Ren crosses the floor to stop by Hux’s bedside, forcing Hux to look directly up at him. For all there’s something typically menacing about the gesture, there’s an incongruent softness in his gaze.

Hux just stiffens his spine. “Would you care to explain what the _fuck_ my dead commanding officer is doing in my motel room, or shall I call local security?”

Ren still says nothing, and Hux is reminded against his will of a particular training session with Snoke about which he never learned any details. Ren had shown up in Hux’s chambers, oddly stoic but completely taciturn. He blew, rimmed, and thoroughly fucked Hux, without a word until the shower after.

It had been all right--none of Ren’s obnoxiously cocky dirty talk for Hux to feign immunity to--until it wasn’t. 

Until it was unsettling, and scrubbing Ren’s come off of his thighs, he’d reignited an argument about tactics for the Trandosha invasion, just to get him talking.

What will it take now?

Hux studies his face for a moment: he looks space-pale, worse than Hux, Hux is sure, and Hux is not only perennially paper-white, but currently hungover. 

His lips are cracked, and there’s the usual quiver to them. The redness in his eyes is worse up close. At least his hair looks relatively clean.

His hands, though, are shaking. Badly. For all he’s trying to ball them at his sides.

“You’re unwell,” Hux pronounces, though there’s really nothing to debate about it. His gaze drops to Ren’s lack of belt. “And unarmed.”

He’s known Kylo Ren for over seven years, and has never once seen him without a weapon. It’s like socks and shirtsleeves. A wardrobe essential. Something about the saber’s absence raises gooseflesh on Hux’s wrists.

_But if he turned, too, like they said on the news--_

“Would you care to explain--” Hux starts again, just as Ren’s hand smacks onto the sidetable, as if in a feeble attempt to steady himself, as if he’s about to--

Ren’s hand slips off the table as he crumples to the floor, unconscious.

#

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Hux has said little else for the past hour, outside of an aborted transmission to the motel’s front desk. He’d dialed the frequency on the in-room comm, been prepared to report a massive intruder passed out in his floor.

But curiosity had stopped him. 

What did the reports mean, that Ren-- _Ben??--_ had somehow helped stop the very Emperor he had been blind enough to help bring back? What did _Ren_ mean--clearly alive, if less than well, having followed Hux to the very world he’d effectively banished him to?

So Hux had cursed his way out of bed, crouched over Ren’s fallen form, and taken his thready pulse. Finally, he shook Ren awake enough to help him collapse onto the mattress, after which he fell immediately back into a more natural sleep.

By now, the morning light has turned golden through the frosted window, but still catches in Ren’s hair, fanned as it is on the pillow. He’s curled on his side, into himself, facing the door as always. His side rises and falls with a rhythm Hux finds it hard not to match, even pacing the room, trying to figure out what in the seventeen hells to _do_.

It’s so unfair.

They were supposed to be rid of each other, having parted on nearly the worst possible terms. Hux had wanted no more to do with a reckless fool like Ren, and Ren had wanted no more to do with a feckless traitor like Hux.

_But if Ren had--impossibly--turned traitor himself…_

Hux stops at the door, looks compulsively out the peephole into the corridor. Across the hall, a pair of Sullustans lope out of their room, arm in arm. The light above them finally flickers entirely out, and they curse at it in their language.

Hux turns on his heel, back toward Ren.

If Ren’s having some sort of identity crisis--hells, even feeling some sort of regret-- _Hux_ is the last person in the galaxy he should have brought it to. If he really started helping the Resistance, doesn’t he now have family for that?

But Hux has always been the one who gets stuck with this shit. Cleaning up the messes other people made of Kylo Ren. 

He’s not even gotten a week of freedom, and guess who the fuck apparently decides to scrape him up off the sidewalk and tuck him into bed like he suddenly cares again.

And then proceed to pass out, needy as ever. 

Fuck him.

As Hux passes the couch, where it looks like Ren spread out his cloak, his gaze lingers on the pistol swaddled inside it. Only the muzzle is visible, glinting out of the black fabric like a white dwarf star.

It would be extremely easy. Ren’s asleep and less guarded, at least, than usual. 

He hasn’t had a chance like this since Snoke’s throne room (well, except for the night after the triumph on Tah’Nuhna, when Hux had one glass of champagne with Ren and decided that was enough of an excuse for the ensuing mistake).

It would be so easy now.

He’d pick up the pistol, cock it silently. Continue his circuit across the room and pause once he’d moved behind Ren’s back. Draw the blaster, and put a bolt in the back of his skull before he’d so much as woken up. (It would be painless.)

Freedom, yes?

But then, what would he do with the cor--

He’s already passed the couch when a noise from the bed startles him out of his thoughts.

Ren’s stirred, and is... _coughing_. Wet and angry and chest-deep. It wracks his whole body, shakes his shoulders. It’s loud, but it has to stop at some point.

Hux reaches the window and turns again, and Ren keeps coughing. 

“Could you stop that?”

No response, of course.

At least this time he has the excuse of being breathless. By the time Hux hits the door again, it hasn’t stopped, and Ren’s complexion has finally taken on some color, if for all the wrong reasons.

“For fuck’s sake.”

Hux left his water bottle on the caf table after drinking his fill, but he snags it as he passes, uncaps it, then comes to a stop beside the bed.

Ren has stopped for a ragged breath, but then the fit takes him again. He looks up at Hux with watering eyes, and Hux proffers him the bottle, tentatively seating himself on the edge of the mattress.

“Hey,” Hux murmurs, “hey, breathe,” as if acting on programming, not volition.

He places an awkward hand on Ren’s back, guiding him at least upright enough to swallow as his long fingers wrap around the base of the bottle. Hux drops his hands as soon as Ren’s sitting, gulping down the water like a desert nomad who’s reached an oasis. 

A tear slips from the corner of Ren’s eye as he catches his breath and finally lowers the bottle. He drags the back of his hand across his nose and tips his chin toward the stained ceiling, blinking rapidly. A distracting pink flush blooms across his cheeks.

Hux looks away, stretching his legs out and dragging his heels over the carpet. “Well?” 

“Thank you.”

In Hux’s periphery, the water bottle floats upright onto the sidetable and lands with a quiet _thunk._

Hux stands with a groan of the mattress, turning to watch Ren moving, too. He pulls his knees to his chest, wraps his arms around them, and looks up at Hux with still-wet eyes.

“Don’t look so pathetic,” Hux snaps. 

“I’m not.” Ren lifts one hand enough to comb his hair out of his face. “You looked pretty pathetic last night.”

Oh, he is _not_ going to start this life debt bullshit. Not after everything.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Hux returns, as coldly as he can. “I don’t owe you for any of this.”

Ren takes a long, snuffling inhale. “I know you don’t.” 

“That’s one thing we can agree on.” Hux’s hands drift behind his back into parade rest, for all it’s a violation to assume the position out of uniform. “I threatened to comm security earlier. Give me one reason not to.”

Ren lifts his head and straightens his back, setting his elbows on top of his knees. “You want answers. You’re practically bleeding curiosity. You thought I was dead.”

Hux picks at a hangnail. “That’s what the news said.”

“What else are they saying?” Ren returns, stiffening further. There’s an odd urgency in his voice.

“The reports say you helped the Jedi defeat the Emperor.”

Ren hums at that, idly rubs his shin. “Surprising.”

Kylo fucking Ren, enigmatic as ever.

“What do you mean, _surprising?_ ” Hux returns. _“_ Is it true?”

Ren’s head snaps up. “Of course it’s true! Would I be sitting here if I’d stayed at Palpatine’s side?”

Hux pops his lips. 

Ren says it like it’s obvious, like betraying the Emperor was an inevitability, rather than what must have been a split-second decision from the man who’d aspired to become his lackey. To follow in Vader’s footsteps to the last. 

If he’d thought of this just one day sooner, Hux might still have everything he worked for. 

Everything Hux has wanted to tell him since Ren’s shift toward mystical warfare bubbles up inside him again, amplified exponentially by the fact that it’s ended exactly as Hux knew it would.

 _I-told-you-so,_ yes, but also _if-you’d-listened-we-would-still-have-a-life._

“And you dared call me a traitor,” Hux says, with all the vitriol he can manage.

“That was before.”

“Before _what_?”

Ren’s gaze clouds over, threatening storms. “Why do you care? We made the same decision in the end. I betrayed the Emperor, not you.”

_The bastard. The absolute fucking--_

“Because you apparently waited to do so until our entire organization had been decimated beyond salvation!”

“Would you have rather I didn’t at all?” Ren unfolds himself, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and stands shakily, facing Hux.

“What does it matter, if you did so too late?”

“Too late for what? The galaxy is saved.”

Hux rolls his eyes all but involuntarily. No change in loyalty could ever strip Ren of his arrogance. “Too late for the Order. For the government we’d all but completely established before you became so greedy--”

“You’re not angry that I turned to the Light. You’re still--”

Hux interrupts. “The Light?”

For the first six years they knew each other, Ren did nothing but fight the Light. But suffer underneath it and crush it under his boots. 

Every time. 

He’d surrendered to the Dark, he said, over and over again, to Hux, to Snoke, to that horrible melted mask.

Ren runs a hand through his hair. “Sort of. I don’t know.” He pushes past Hux, checking his shoulder, pacing toward the wall. Hux pivots to keep watching him, and Ren turns on his heel after just two steps, resuming the eye contact. He rakes his fingers through his hair again.

“Don’t pretend you care,” he continues, taut. “You’re clearly just still pissed I brought in Sidious in the first place. Guess that ruined your personal chances at ruling the galaxy.”

“Yes!” Hux returns. “Of course I am! You can’t just take the organization I built away from me, surrender it to the Emperor, then… then show up at my door, now, after exiling me--“

“Saving you,” Ren corrects, almost airily.

“Fuck you.” Hux doesn’t miss a beat. “You show up at my door--after _exiling_ me--saying we’re the same, when you’ve done nothing but step all over me since the _Finalizer_ fell.”

Of course Ren completely ignores the truest claim Hux has ever made. “I intended to make a place for you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Hux spits back. “You demoted me.”

“Demoted you?” Ren’s started pacing again, but stops in his tracks, mere centimeters from Hux’s chest. “We simply moved to the _Steadfast_. I thought Pryde would be dead within a week.”

“You didn’t think that. You didn’t think anything. You were so fucking distracted—“

“I thought—I _think_ about you all the time!” Ren retorts, volume ticking up like it does, volcanic. “I tried to make that obvious.”

The audacity of him. The _audacity_.

“You’re such a fucking liar.” Hux balls a fist at his side. It’s all he can do not to jab a finger into Ren’s chest. “You are _such_ a _liar_!”

“I wasn’t going to upset Pryde’s command on his own flagship.” Ren leans into Hux’s face for a moment, enunciating so clearly, so viciously, that Hux flinches back for fear of being spit on. “I can’t help it if you were too cowardly to do anything about it yourself.”

“Cowardly? I was being smart.” Hux turns on his own heel, paces toward the wall. “I wasn’t about to off your man.”

Ren’s hand lands immediately on Hux’s shoulder, turning him around. His face, though, is less angry than hurt, confused. “My ‘man’? I wasn’t fucking Pryde, I—“

“Good gods.” Hux shuts his eyes, rubs his temples. “Good fucking gods. You idiot. I’m talking about power, not sex.”

“I didn’t know you knew the difference,” Ren replies, archly.

Hux shakes his hand off. There’s no universe in which he has to listen to this kind of shit, not when he’s finally free. 

“Fuck you.” He holds Ren’s gaze, enunciates like he means it. “Get out of here. You told me you never wanted to see me again, and here you’ve been, crying in my bed.”

“It’s not your bed—“

Holy shit, Ren’s about to go all _technically speaking_ , like he’s approximately ten years old.

Hux can’t fucking stand it, he never has, and now no one in the entire galaxy can make him listen to it.

“You never fucking change!” he says, flinging both hands down at his sides, then immediately pointing the finger he can’t contain. “You’re the same pathetic child you were when Snoke dumped you onto _my_ ship seven years ago and ruined the empire I was building. 

“You stand for nothing; you believe in nothing. You’ve always been a vessel, a blank canvas for whichever higher power could make you feel _wanted_. You—“

“Are you so different, _Hux_?” Ren interrupts. A step forward closes the gap between them. His eyes are still red-rimmed, but focused, not wild.

“You’ve never had to make a decision in your life, and you’ve just become exactly what they told you you were supposed to. You bought your own propaganda, to the point that you betrayed your own organization the moment it veered the slightest bit from your vision, and the only reason your treason didn’t kill you was because _I_ have always had a weakness for you!”

Ren’s so transparent. He’s so fucking transparent sometimes, Hux feels like he could punch a hole right through him. 

Ren wants Hux to swoon into his arms, then drop to his knees and blow him.

Ren is an idiot.

“You think I wouldn’t have found my way out of the medbay and into an escape craft by myself?” Hux sneers. 

Ren actually _scoffs_ in return, like he finds this all so hilarious. “Pryde would have had you executed the moment he found out you were alive.”

“And you think I couldn’t have handled—“

“Just like you did on the bridge?” Ren retorts, dripping sarcasm. “Just like you did on the sidewalk last night?”

“You’ve always underestimated me.”

Ren’s expression drops at that, some inscrutable force of gravity tugging at the corner of his lips. “Hux, I--” he starts.

Like hell he’s going to finish.

“You’ve _always_ underestimated me,” Hux repeats, all but through his teeth, “and this time, it saved the galaxy.”

“I saved the galaxy too!”

Hux refuses to acknowledge that with any kind of praise. Ren’s fished for enough compliments from him in the past week.

“And look where it fucking got us,” he hisses instead, gesturing to the expanse of the room--the rusty radiator, the chipping paint, the dyspeptic couch.

“Us?”

_Fuck._

Hux runs a hand through his hair, rolls his eyes at the smoke stains. “Apparently, since you won’t get the fuck out of this motel room as I asked.”

An unfamiliar calm rolls over Ren’s face. It’s more than just a shuttering, like those rare occasions when he used to get overwhelmed and go cold. It’s something that seems to come from the inside out, blossoming across his now-unmarred face. 

It’s unsettling, but not entirely unwelcome.

The Light must be a hell of a prescription.

“I’ll go,” he says, all too quietly, holding Hux’s gaze. “I’ll go as soon as you want, I just— You haven’t asked why I followed you here.”

“Apparently to yell at me about what a traitor I am, you hypocrite.”

“Fuck.” Ren swallows visibly, and his voice thickens, the telltale snag in the back of his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just, you—“

Hux gives him a thin smile and steps back, clearing the path to the door. “Simply bring out the worst in you?”

“No,” Ren returns, with a gentle firmness that Hux doesn’t recognize. “Never. The opposite. Always.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I know.” Ren’s blinking rapidly, covers his mouth with his hand briefly, then drops it, meets Hux’s gaze. “I know. Hear me out anyway.”

Hux should say _no._ He should tell Ren that he betrayed the Order from the moment he set foot on Exegol--hells, on _Mustafar,_ seeking the wayfinder. Should tell him that he destroyed Hux’s life on a whim, and saving him was the least he could do, and still nothing like enough. 

That he doesn’t want to hear another damn word out of his mouth, that he wants him to leave and never return. (What happened to _don’t attempt to contact me, I don’t want to hear your traitor’s excuses_?)

Hux should say all of it, by rights, then deck him across his perfect jaw.

He should.

But Hux has no work and no prospects, and if he tells Ren to go, he’ll wish he’d listened, if only to spurn him one final time.

And Hux is alone on this world, but doubly bound to the man before him: through the Order, then through giving it up.

And Ren’s lips are trembling again, and the light is in his hair.

Another coughing fit wracks his body, and he bends into himself pitifully. There are reports of a fight on Endor--Hux wonders if he picked up the chest cold there, it’s wet enough, or just from the fumes on that Sith world.

Hux hands him the water bottle again, and Ren takes it readily, lowers it from his lips only when but a few milliliters remain, sloshing around the bottom.

“You should sit down,” Hux says, nodding toward the bed.

Ren lowers himself carefully. “Thanks. You can, too, if you...” He trails off, gesturing lamely to the empty space beside him.

“I’ll stand.”

Ren’s fingers are laced between his spread legs, elbows resting on his thighs. He looks up to meet Hux’s gaze; from this angle, his eyes look massive, too wet. “I didn’t come here because I want something from you.”

Hux shifts his weight. “Good.”

“I’m mostly on Nevarro looking for work, the same as you. I’d sensed you--or thought I did, anyway--and tried to decide whether to find you to say this, and then--”

“You were wandering the streets, and found me passed out drunk,” Hux supplies. Heat prickles across his cheeks at the mere admission, at the second mental image in almost as few days of Ren _collecting_ his unconscious form. “A sign from the Force?”

“I took it as one.” Ren shrugs. “For what that’s worth, anymore.”

“Why do they think you’re dead?”

“I, well.” Ren unlaces his fingers to flex them, study his boots. “I...disappeared. I was completely drained, and something-- Something happened with the Jedi--with Rey--that made me realize that I would have to have a future, after the Order, after the Emperor. After you.”

Hux scoffs. “Of course you wouldn’t consider that _before_ changing sides.”

“There wasn’t a chance. I was so caught up in...in all of it. I didn’t think.” Ren looks up at Hux again; his eyes are shining, just that much. “And here I am.”

“So you’re thinking now, I suppose?”

If this is some misconstrued attempt to win Hux back, to make _Hux_ his future…

“I said I didn’t want anything from you. I don’t. Not like that. Just.” Ren pauses, inhales. “You deserve to know you were right. About Palpatine, about the Order, about everything. I recorded that holo before I’d realized it.”

Hux says nothing at first, but reaches down and cups Ren’s chin, firmly, forcing his gaze to stay up. (His skin is so warm.) “I know I was right.”

Ren relaxes into even that slight contact, and his hand rises to cover Hux’s entirely, holding it in place. “I wanted you to know _I_ knew. And I wanted--” He slips his fingers between Hux’s hand and his own skin, taking Hux’s hand in his own. He presses his lips to the back of it, to the veins and delicate bones. “I wanted to apologize for not realizing sooner.”

“It didn’t sound like that a moment ago,” Hux replies, aiming for harshness, but winding up breathy. Compromised. Somehow, he can’t bring himself to pull away.

Ren’s grip shifts, lips press wet to the inside of his wrist, right at the pulse point. “I’m sorry for that too,” he murmurs against his skin. “I’m sorry for all of it.”

Hux wouldn’t say he forgives him even if Ren seemed to be expecting it, so there’s no chance of it now. But that makes it all the easier to let him keep talking, keep kissing and caressing. 

Hux is nothing but a receptacle for it--Ren’s guilt and regret and misplaced affection. It’s all far easier to accept than to reproduce. As if propelled by some magnetic force, he slips his free hand into Ren’s hair, combing it back, then simply resting against his scalp. It’s as soft as it always has been.

“I thought of you.” Ren’s voice is splintering. Hux can’t stand it. “Like I said I do. If _you_ \--if Armitage fucking Hux--had abandoned the Order, what could possibly be left for me?”

Hux tugs his hair at that. “The Emperor?” he says, not quite caustic. “All that firepower you sold out for?”

“Servitude.” Ren would sound bitter, if not for the way his throat is tightening. “You couldn’t accept that.”

“Never,” Hux lies. Can’t stand to add _only for you, only for a little while._ Ren already knows that part, anyway.

“I didn’t think I would see you again, when I decided. I was sure I was going to die, I--” Ren stops for a long, sniffling breath.

Hux slips his hand down to cup Ren’s cheek again, forcing his gaze up. “You didn’t.” 

Ren’s lips are quivering, eyes are wet. He clenches them shut, but not before a tear slides down his cheek. It catches in the seam between Hux’s thumb and his skin. 

Hux’s own eyes sting for a moment, and it’s exhaustion, obviously exhaustion. 

Ren blinks, swipes a hand across his nose and cheeks. “Fuck.” His voice cracks as he repeats it, broad frame shuddering with a sob. “ _Fuck._ ”

Hux rubs his wet thumb across Ren’s cheek. He’s never known what to do with this: Ren’s conflict and his brokenness, the sorrow he’s always carried with him like a canker. Like a persistent and ugly sore that occasionally erupts through his skin, infecting everything around it.

What can Hux do but what he’s always done? What but hush him, press an uncomfortable hand to his back? What but attempt to steady him?

“Stop this,” he murmurs, rubbing spirals between Ren’s shoulderblades. His other hand is damp with tears. “You have to stop this.”

“I’m sorry.” Ren snuffles, but doesn’t stop shaking. “I’m sorry.”

Hux clears his throat, blinks back the tears kaleidoscoping his own vision. “Please. Ren. I can’t—“

“Don’t call me that.”

 _Fuck._ It shouldn’t feel like a blow to the chest, like their past intimacy thrown back in Hux’s face. 

“Your name?” he asks, sounding small in his own ears.

“I don’t know,” Ren says, waterlogged. “I don’t—“

“Hush.” Hux digs his nails into Ren’s skin through the soft fabric, firm enough to get his attention, but not—Hux hopes—to hurt. “Kylo. Is that better?”

Ren doesn’t quite answer. “I didn’t come here to do this.” He chokes an inhale. “Fall apart on you, I—“

“To your credit,” Hux lies, “it’s at least satisfying.”

“Fuck off,” Ren says, then immediately backs over it: “I’m sorry,” he repeats, “I’m sorry,” and “I’m sorry.” 

His face is wet under Hux’s fingers, back is warm and solid, yet unstable.

Four years ago, Hux could have fixed this. Four years ago, Hux would have kissed the tears off every square centimeter of his fascinating face, fingered him tender and fucked him rough. 

But four years ago, they were in line to rule the galaxy. 

Four years ago, the Hosnian System was still spinning.

Four years ago, the Emperor was a memory, and the most potent threats to Hux’s loyalty to the Order were Snoke’s cruelty and Ren himself. 

Four years ago, he would have vowed he’d never outlive his organization.

Yet here he is. 

Here _Ren_ is—here Kylo is, rather, or perhaps Ben, beautiful if shattered, crying himself breathless into the palm of Hux’s hand.

Hux can’t stand it. 

He squeezes his eyes shut against his own tears, tips his chin toward the ceiling, and swallows back the sharp stone that feels like it’s lodged in the back of his throat.

“Damn it, Kylo,” he murmurs, then swings one knee up onto the bed. 

The other follows, and Hux shifts awkwardly, thighs framing Ren’s as he settles himself onto Ren’s lap. He stretches his legs with another squeak of the mattress, wraps them around Ren’s body. He leaves one hand in the center of Ren’s back, cups the nape of his neck with the other.

Ren’s arms immediately fold around Hux’s waist, both hands spread across his back, spanning much of it. He pulls Hux close, buries his face against his chest, and breathes into him, slow, steadying.

Hux plays with the soft hairs at the base of Ren’s skull, combs tangles out with his fingers. His own vision blurs. 

“How did we come to this?” he murmurs, breath catching.

Ren lifts his head, pulls back enough to meet Hux’s eyes. “It’s on me,” he says. “All of it.”

“I know it is.”

“And it was all you that—“ Ren inhales raggedly, looks down at their tangled legs. “I mean, there were multiple factors, but. I wouldn’t have done what I did without what you did first.”

Hux sees right through him, of course—the flattery that he’s always used, that Hux has sometimes even let himself believe. 

But the thing about Ren is that he believes it, too, at least when it’s coming out of his mouth. And this? It doesn’t seem so far-fetched, not when Ren’s sniffling into his chest, and the galaxy is free of the Empire.

(Of the Order, too, and all Hux has worked for, but he’ll celebrate what he can. That the hardest decision he’s ever made wasn’t a complete failure.)

Hux traces spirals on Ren’s back. “Tell me that again.”

Instead of responding, Ren’s hands drop to the hem of Hux’s shirt, slip underneath, warm and calloused against his skin, rucking up the fabric front and back.

“You saved the galaxy,” Ren murmurs, stroking up his spine, “twice.”

Warmth courses through Hux’s bloodstream at the contact, more than the assertion, but he sighs at it anyway, lifts his arms when Ren keeps raising his shirt. 

Hux shouldn’t allow this, shouldn’t accept it, but this--permitting Ren’s touch--has never before been the same as forgiving him. Why should that change now? 

( _Especially_ here, now, when this is the closest Hux can get to any kind of satisfaction.)

Hux relaxes, and Ren slides his shirt off over his head. He tosses it onto the floor behind him, then surveys Hux’s chest with watery eyes.

Hux lets him.

But something like a sob escapes him as his gaze roves down Hux’s ribcage, lands on the fresh scar in the center, still puckered and angry.

“Shit,” he murmurs. 

“Don’t look at that.”

Surprisingly compliant, Ren glances up to Hux’s face. 

“Where’s yours?” Hux asks, tracing his cheek. He’d only touched Ren’s scars once (the champagne night, after Tah’Nuhna, when he’d licked them thoroughly and told himself everything would be okay). It still feels odd, seeing him unmarked after a year of nothing but his scarred face.

“Gone,” Ren says cryptically. “It doesn’t matter.” He looks back and forth between Hux’s face and the ugly mouth of the scar, then lifts a hand to hover over it, a question in his eyes. “May I…?”

“It won’t hurt me.”

Ren inhales sharply, through his nose, before closing the gap between his fingertips and Hux’s skin. 

The scar itself is still nerveless, but Ren’s touch is dust-light along the livid edge of it. 

“I should have been there,” he whispers, breath warm against Hux’s skin, where a flush is spreading against Hux’s will. 

He doesn’t say Ren would have only killed him himself if he had. He’s unsure that it would be true.

“You did what you could,” Hux admits instead.

“Not enough.” Ren bites down on his quivering lip and drops his hand, clenching his eyes shut again before looking back at Hux. “You didn’t deserve—“

“I didn’t,” Hux agrees.

Ren doesn’t answer, just swallows visibly and presses his head to Hux’s bare skin. His lips brush the hollow of Hux’s throat, his collar bones, linger wet across his negligible pecs. The tip of Ren’s nose presses against his sternum, and Hux works his fingers through his hair.

Ren shudders at that, inhales damply. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

It’s all Hux has wanted out of him for years, but it’s jarring to hear it given so freely. If he doesn’t shut up, Hux is going to start pitying him. 

Ren just kisses the center of his chest, then moves left toward his heart, dipping his had enough to mouth at Hux’s pebbling nipple. 

Hux starts at the sudden contact, and Ren pulls away—guilty, chastened. If he’s about to start apologizing again—

“Don’t,” Hux murmurs, regretting the flinch. “You might as well go on.”

Wordlessly, Ren bows his head again, swirls his tongue around the sensitive, warming skin, then kisses it again. All the blood in Hux’s body feels like it’s dropped below his waist, and _fuck._

This is really all it takes? ( _All it’s ever taken, with Ren.)_

Ren’s chest heaves with the threat of more tears, and he pauses, as if trying to collect himself.

Then one of his hands slips under Hux’s thigh, nearly encircling it. He glances up again, sniffs, but cocks his head to one side, smug as ever, before looking back down at the immutable line of Hux’s semi.

“You want to fuck me until I forget,” Hux scoffs, but rolls his hips against Ren’s anyway. 

Ren tightens his grip on Hux’s thigh. “If it would help.”

And Hux should say _no_. 

They’ll only break each other again, even if they’re nothing but ghosts and criminals. This won’t end well. 

But it was never going to, and Ren’s hands are massive and warm, his lips tender, his eyes wet. He always fucks Hux like he knows his way around his body, like he fits inside him better than he fits anywhere else in the galaxy.

And Hux is already half undressed, and nothing matters anymore. If he was going to say _no_ , he would have said it a long time ago.

He bends his head, then brushes Ren’s hair aside to kiss his forehead. “Do your best.”

The anxious tension Ren’s been carrying evaporates as he meets Hux’s eyes again, replaced immediately by the tight-spring urgency of desire. 

He lifts both of Hux’s thighs, and Hux only tightens his grip on Ren’s waist as Ren inelegantly flips him onto his back, then climbs to lie above him, one arm beside his head on the pillow. Hux isn’t sure which part knocks the breath out of him.

Light still filters in through the translucent window, haloing Ren’s form, while it throws his face into shadow.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathes, sounding hoarse again.

“Don’t tell me that.” Hux reaches up to tuck a loose curl behind the shell of Ren’s ear. “Tell me what I did.”

“Okay.” Ren dips his head to nuzzle at Hux’s throat, hair tickling him. “Okay, you’re a hero.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

Ren just presses his lips on top of Hux’s heart. He can probably feel it racing through the skin or the Force. It’s only fair. He’s breathless himself, looks ready to cry again. 

“Wait for the history books,” Ren manages, pecking Hux’s left nipple, then his right.

“I’ll be a footnote under your name.” Hux tugs his hair. “At best, a case study in treason.”

“Right,” Ren says, moving further down between Hux’s legs to access Hux’s ribs and belly. He licks a hot stripe down his torso. “So a hero.” He’s paused at the scar, but before Hux can stop him, he presses his lips to it, top and bottom, either side of the jagged edge. “They’ll probably say we were both in on it.”

Hux can’t help snorting. “What are the chances we’d reach the same conclusion separately?”

“Not separately.” Ren presses a kiss to the scar’s insensitive center. “Like I told you.” He gives Hux no chance to respond before he’s licking the scar’s circumference, hot and ticklish.

“You’re disgusting,” Hux says, even as his cock swells further, straining against his leggings.

Ren lifts his mouth but doesn’t look up. “Stop me at any point,” he says, almost teasing.

“Can I?” Hux moves his foot to nudge Ren’s stomach. “Stop you?”

“You’re unique in that,” Ren returns, before nuzzling lower, past Hux’s navel to the trail of light hair dipping into his trousers. He hooks his thumbs into Hux’s waistband, and gives him a quizzical look.

Hux lifts his hips in response, and Ren settles back onto his knees to slide Hux’s leggings, then his briefs, down his legs. He tosses them unceremoniously into the floor with Hux’s shirt.

His eyes rove Hux’s nakedness, and Hux is grateful his thighs are bent, concealing—for the moment—the scar on his thigh. 

To get Ren moving again, he lifts one foot and slips it under Ren’s loose tunic. “You, too.”

“Sure.” Ren colors darker than he’s already flushed. “Right.”

He shucks the tunic in a single fluid motion, baring a torso as unblemished as his face. Hux has missed it more than he realized: the broad waist and planes of muscle, the slight give of soft stomach. 

It’s as if Starkiller never fell, and they’re back at the beginning of things.

Ren’s soft trousers are tented unmistakably, the promise of what’s on offer.

Ren, though, just keeps looking at Hux. It looks more like... _appreciation_ than timidity, and perhaps this isn’t just like the first time, because Snoke’s twenty-four-year-old apprentice took everything for granted except the way Hux called him _darling._

The light streams around his body, and he looks ready to cry again.

Hux sits up slightly. “There’s lube in the ‘fresher.”

Ren blinks as if pulled from deep waters, brow furrowing. “Yours?”

“No.” Hux runs his foot along Ren’s thigh, rolling it over the bulge of his cock. “Compliments of the motel.”

Ren shudders at the pressure, but manages to smirk. “Good establishment.”

Hux lifts his foot, releasing him to swing his legs over the side of the bed and head for the ‘fresher. 

“Fair warning,” Hux calls after him, “the brand is shitty.”

“It’ll do,” Ren returns, over his shoulder.

It’s too easy, falling back into this.

Hux strokes his cock to full hardness while he waits for Ren to come back, listening to the thump of opening cabinets. It’s drowned out, though, by the wet bark of Ren’s cough. 

It’s stopped by the time he emerges from the ‘fresher, lube in hand. He’s swiping his hand across his eyes and swaps the lube for the water bottle on the side table, draining the last of it.

“Certain you’re fit for sex?” Hux half-teases as he sets it down, empty. 

Ren’s hands slip to his waistband. “Always.”

It startles a snort-laugh out of Hux, which only catches in his throat as Ren’s trousers and boxers pool around his knees, his impressive cock curling vivid red toward his stomach. A bead of precome shines at the flared head. 

Hux’s mouth goes as dry as it was when he woke up. 

Ren, though, seems entirely unconcerned with his own condition, gaze trained on the mangled center of Hux’s left thigh.

“What? You saw this one, too.”

Ren shakes his head, thins his lips as much as possible. Then his hand hovers over Hux’s skin, a question in it. 

“If it’s such a turn-on for you.” Hux gestures to the scar like a dare. 

Ren’s always liked him messy, or said as much. Apparently that extends to permanent blemishes.

Ren sucks in a breath as his hand touches Hux’s skin. He traces its rough perimeter first, as he did with Hux’s chest, unbearably gentle. Then he simply rests his hand on top of it, eyes shut, throat working.

When the silence has gone on too long, Hux gives his cock another idle jerk and clears his throat. “That one I did bring upon myself.”

“Not really,” Ren says, then lifts his hand to his own mouth. In one seamless motion, he kisses the fingertips and...presses them briefly back down to the scar.

“What—“ Hux starts as Ren climbs back onto the bed, not sure if he’s supposed to laugh.

An almost sad smile curves Ren’s lips as he settles back between Hux’s legs, lube in hand. 

“Nothing,” he returns. He places a hand on Hux’s knee as Hux plants his feet.

It must be the Light, this tenderness, or perhaps just the chance of losing Hux permanently, which Ren apparently does care about, after all.

“So,” Ren says, changing the topic. He uncaps the lube and picks off a safety seal that’s shockingly actually there. “Have you looked for work yet?”

“What?” Hux says again. 

Ren squeezes a thick line of lube onto his fingers, rubs it in. “Just asking.”

“At this point you’re typically explaining exactly what your magnificent cock’s going to do to me.”

“We both know what already,” Ren says, shifting forward with a glance down at the furl of Hux’s exposed entrance, then back to his slick fingers. 

Hux’s cock twitches at the mere sight of them. Ren’s always been able to do this to him, tear through his walls of poise and restraint, take him to pieces with a gesture or a glance. 

“If you don’t mind,” he manages in reply to the unspoken question. 

Ren splays his free hand across Hux’s other thigh and lines his fingers up with Hux’s entrance. He places them against Hux, warm and wet and _massive._ His breath hitches audibly, even above the pounding of blood in Hux’s ears.

“Kylo?” 

Ren’s given name still feel less than right on Hux’s lips. (There’s a part of him hearing nothing but _I need Kylo Ren to fail— I need Kylo Ren— I need—)_

 _“Kylo,”_ he moans, as Ren breaches him without warning, pushing past the ring of muscle in a burst of pleasure-pain.

“Tell me how much you need,” Ren says, as if in answer to his thoughts.

Hux can only nod as Ren starts moving. It’s just one finger, but it’s been so long, the stretch alone is sparking Hux’s vision. He bites his lip to keep from screaming as Ren hooks his finger and _moves_. Brushes his prostate with a practiced touch.

Hux’s hips buck up toward him involuntarily, and Ren gives him a smile that’s almost _shy._ He pulls his forefinger out only enough to insert a second with it, filling Hux even more completely, with a burn Hux can feel at the base of his spine.

Precome leaks freely onto Hux’s stomach, a glistening trail toward the scar. Hux looks up from it to Ren’s face, tight with unshed tears. 

“Can I move again?” he says, thickly. 

“Yes,” Hux replies, ragged, “yes, just— _ah—“_ He breaks off as Ren scissors his fingers, striking his prostate again.

“Fuck, R— Kylo. I wanted to— _yes, there_ \--I wanted to last, you know.”

His cock is dripping steadily, fully slicking his stomach. 

“You never last.”

 _There’s_ the Ren Hux knows. The smugness, the _gloating_ , the quirked lip. 

“I missed you,” Hux says, breathless, before he can stop it.

Ren smiles with both corners of his mouth. “Do you want a third finger, or…?”

“If you give me a third finger, I’ll come on the spot.”

“I thought you wanted to—“

Hux props himself up a bit more, musters his most sultry tone, which still falls flat. “I’m asking for your cock, Kylo.”

“No shit,” Ren replies, but the smile keeps tugging at his lips, exposing teeth, like it seldom does.

“You’re terribly happy all of a sudden,” Hux scoffs. “Ought I be concerned?”

Ren shakes his head, squeezes out some more lube, and begins slicking his cock. His massive fingers wrap around his shaft, the lube squelching obscenely against his skin.

“I just like looking at you.”

Hux is expecting some soliloquy about how good he is or needy, how he and his hole are Kylo’s alone, but none comes. He must know better by now; know this is a privilege.

“I’d much prefer you fuck me,” Hux says, tilting his head what he hopes is coquettishly.

There’s no need for a _come-hither,_ though, not when Ren’s gaze is devouring him limb by limb. Ren shifts forward, and Hux locks his legs around his thick waist before Ren can ask him if he wants this on his back. (Looking at Ren isn’t so bad, either.)

The head of his cock teases Hux’s stretched entrance for a moment as he positions himself, the contact radiating heat through Hux’s bloodstream.

“Kylo, please--” Hux starts, forgetting himself, as Ren momentarily strokes his maimed thigh, then cups his balls, before sinking in.

Even Ren’s fingers have never been adequate preparation for the sting of his cock--the stretch and unbearable friction of it, the way Hux’s body makes room for him, like he’s always belonged there, like--

Ren swears as he sinks in, centimeter by gradual centimeter, his chest pressing closer to Hux’s with the angle. 

Hux clings to his shoulders, pulling him closer, closer, _closer_ still, as his body yields to Ren, as the shape of him blots out the light. 

Ren stutters a breath as he bottoms out, and Hux is full--full to _breaking_ \--and it’s almost enough to stop his brain. Almost.

Ren’s eyes are wet above him, lips full, parted with an expression akin to disbelief-- _am I really alive, am I really inside him, is everything over, is everything forgiven_.

The _lostness_ in his face is too much; Hux arches up into him, crushes his lips against the questions on Ren’s. 

Ren gasps hot into his mouth and returns it as he starts to move--short, staccato movements at first, then a steady rhythm of fuller thrusts that make Hux buck up against the emptiness left behind, dig his nails into Ren’s shoulders, his heels into Ren’s spine. He misses Ren’s lips as Ren sinks back into him, kissing the tip of his nose instead, his chin, his dramatic jaw.

“ _Just this--”_ he murmurs, half to himself, half out of his head, but loses _once_ in an undignified cry as Ren hits his prostate, wiping every coherent thought but _more, this; yes, love; yes, Kylo_ from his mind.

“Thank you,” Ren says as he lingers inside him, crushes his lips against Hux’s and parts them with his tongue, pressing firmly against Hux’s own.

Hux’s hands slip into Ren’s hair, tugging at his scalp as he kisses him swollen, barely in time with short, sloppy thrusts that tease Hux’s prostate, edge him closer, but don’t quite hit it.

Hux is breathing his air, tasting his tongue, being smothered by the wetness of his lips, and it doesn’t matter. Ren’s hair falls around his face, curtaining him off from the shabby room, the late-morning sun, the stains on the ceiling and their shadow play.

When Ren draws back from the kiss, panting, he slams his hips hard into Hux, eliciting a scream that seems to come from far away as pleasure fuzzes out his thoughts.

“Are you close, baby?” Ren pushes into him again, voice thick, whether with breathlessness or tears, Hux can’t tell. Sweat plasters wisps of dark hair to his forehead, shines on his neck and chest.

Hux probably looks worse. He can only nod around the lump in his throat. Precome has pooled on his stomach, and his cock is twitching, aching, throbbing in time with his heart rate.

“Do you want me to--” he starts, as an invisible pressure settles around Hux’s cock. There’s a self-consciousness in the quirk of Ren’s eyebrows, the request in his eyes.

Hux reaches up to cup his face. “Yes,” he says, and kisses him. “Yes.”

The Force curls warm around Hux’s cock, sheathing it in the shape of Ren’s hand, if less solid, less sweaty, but no less firm. It easily matches the pace of Ren’s thrusts, which grow at once harder and more focused. Ren’s cock hits his prostate as the Force massages the head of his own, tracks down the shaft, traces the vein.

It’s good.

Ren is beautiful above him, around him, and it’s _good._

Somehow.

The ceiling dissolves into blinding white sparks as he climaxes, spilling hot onto his own chest as Ren fucks him through it, kisses him through it, until he feels the pulse of Ren’s orgasm inside him, and Ren is breathing, _“thank you, thank you, thank you”_ nonsensically against his lips.

Hux should perhaps be returning it--for saving him, twice now, since the start of all this--but as his cock stills and post-orgasm exhaustion settles over him, all he can do is brush the tears off Ren’s cheeks as he finishes, pull the weight of him down to rest on Hux’s sticky chest, even as he goes flaccid inside him.

Ren’s cheek is wet over Hux’s heart, shoulders shaking. Hux wraps one arm around his back, pets his hair with the other.

“It’s alright,” he whispers, “we’re alright,” and almost believes it.

#

Hux awakens hours later, into dim gray light and an herbal scent that for a moment places him back on the _Finalizer_ , months ago-- before--

_Right._

The motel room resolves around him gradually, all indistinct shadows in the twilight. He props himself up on one elbow, even as the lamp beside him flickers on, as if of its own accord.

His heart rate skyrockets for a moment, but then he registers the weight on the other side of the mattress. The soreness as he sits up.

“‘Evening.” Kylo’s voice is soft beside him, his smile audible even before Hux has met his eyes. “I was wondering if I should be worried.”

“No.” Hux hisses an inhale as he settles beside Kylo and mirrors his position with effort, legs stretched across the mattress. Hux presses his own bare thigh flush against Kylo’s leggings. Kylo’s top half, though, is still naked. 

He sets down a cup of what smells like caf on his own side table, then proffers another one to Hux. The herbal aroma Hux woke up to wafts from the plast lid, and he accepts it, wrapping both hands around the warm flimsi sides.

“Where did you find tarine here?” he asks, lifting the lid enough to blow steam off the water, bob the bag. Doesn’t want to ask _how long were you gone, how long were you away from me, how--_

Kylo reaches down to squeeze his thigh as if he heard all of it. “Close by.”

Hux nods, and takes a sip. The tea washes hot and pungent down his throat, and he closes his eyes, taking it in.

“Glad you still drink it,” Kylo offers, after a moment and a swallow of his caf.

“You know I’m an addict.”

Kylo snorts at that, then strokes Hux’s thigh. He keeps it up, a gentle, left-handed rhythm, oddly undemanding, as they drink in silence and the shadows grow deeper. The lamp beside him seems blindingly bright. 

“I could do without--” Hux starts, but it flickers out with a flick of Ren’s wrist before he can finish. 

Quiet falls between them again, the room thrown into black, gray, and violet. Bruise colors. Night colors. Kylo’s hand doesn’t stop moving, his touch strangely grounding in the dim haze of the room.

Hux’s tea has cooled substantially before Kylo says anything. 

“You never told me if you’d found work.” His hand has stopped, thumb rubbing circles high on Hux’s leg. 

Hux can’t quite stiffen, no matter what uncertainties the question dredges back into the light. “Not yet,” he sighs.

Kylo just hums at that.

“You?” Hux asks.

“Not even close.”

Hux takes another swallow of tea. “I suppose you’ll look elsewhere, then?”

“I don’t know, I—“ Kylo sets cup down on his other side, the soft tap too loud in the still room. “It depends.”

“Well.” Hux transfers his cup to his left hand and sets his right on top of Kylo’s, curling his fingers around Kylo’s knuckles. Stacked on top of Kylo’s massive one, his hand looks pale and small, but not quite fragile. He inhales. He knows what he’s signing himself up for, but he can say nothing else, ask for no less. “I’ve been considering the merits of a...professional partner.”

_If you leave now, I can’t believe I’ll miss you._

“Yeah?” Kylo lets go of Hux’s hand long enough to flip his own over, putting them palm to palm. He links his fingers back through Hux’s. Squeezes. “I have merits.”

Hux purses his lips against a smile, runs his thumb across Kylo’s knuckles. “Do you now?”

“I’ll show you,” Kylo says. His lips nearly brush Hux’s ear. “If you’ll let me.”

Hux doesn’t trust his voice to answer, just turns his head instead, presses a kiss to Kylo’s shoulder. “Alright,” he murmurs, because he still needs him, after everything. Because he has nothing and no one else but his failure and his ghosts. “Alright.”

Kylo rests his chin on Hux’s head, pulls him close. They stay like this as the night draws on, pressed together line for line.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is borrowed from Richard Siken's eponymous poem.
> 
> Brendol's sea monster object lesson is adapted from the SW Rebels novel _Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy_.
> 
> Hell yeah gratuitous _Mandalorian_ references 🙌
> 
> Thanks for reading! Come cry with me on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/imperialhuxness)


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